the line
by Kamakaze Kheri
Summary: There is a line between them that is thin, but unmistakeably there.  It keeps Max in line and Mariam on edge, but mostly it keeps them from being something they're not.  Max/Mariam


**So, I started writing this ages and ages ago and I never got around to fixing it until Lisa (RedWheeler) wanted a Max and Mariam fic, so this basically for her. Inspiration for this came from Taylor Swift's _Haunted_. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything.**

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><p><em>"You and I walk a fragile line. I have known it all this time."<em>

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><p>There is a line between them that is thin, but unmistakably there. It keeps Max in line and Mariam on edge, but mostly it keeps them from being something they're not.<p>

Because Mariam knows better than anyone that pretending will get you no where fast.

New York is some crazy whirl wind of colour and lights and sounds. It's the kind of city that will give you a rush, that makes everything seem a lot better than it should. Impulses are authority and second guessing comes later. Maybe that's how Mariam ends up at a 'Blader party, kissing Max on the dance floor.

"Mariam!" Max exclaims, and it kind of kills the moment because she kind of expected his voice to sound a little huskier and a little bit more interested, but all she hears is surprise. "Are you okay?"

And then it hits her that maybe she's not okay, so she turns and leaves Max behind and knows that somewhere between walking out the door and making it back to her flat, she's crossed back over the line onto her side.

Mariam blames it on the line because she doesn't have anything else to blame it on. She stands in the middle of the room and speaks out loud to the curtains and the lamp shades, just to fill the emptiness.

"If that stupid line wasn't so thin, I wouldn't have crossed it," she says into the darkness. "If it were neon, I could have seen it better."

If it had been more tangible she could have tripped on it and stopped herself.

If it had had a voice it could have warned her not to cross it.

If it had been this, she could have done that.

If it had been that, she wouldn't have done this.

Mariam debates with herself long into the night. She ignores all twenty-seven of Max's phone calls and tells herself not to call him exactly fourteen times. At three o'clock in the morning, she decides that she will not talk to Max until she works out all her issues with the line.

Because she can't let it falter again.

It's not allowed to.

Mariam's not really sure where to start on her problems with the line. How can she solidify it? How can she make it real enough to remind her that she's not allowed to cross it? Whatever it is that Max is always wanting from her, from _them_, is something that Mariam can't give him. The stupid line is supposed to be there for her, to support her. It's not supposed to work the other way and help Max cross it safely.

Mariam decides that the best way to deal with all her frustrations with the line is to take it out on some poor sap who's too naive to decline her a battle. She seduces a boy fairly quickly and they release their Beyblades into an alley brightened by the sun in the sky and brought to life by the honking of taxis and the chatter of New Yorkers.

When Mariam's got the boy beat and he's forking over some cash, the infamous New York Impulse shoves some words out of her mouth: "Do you ever feel like there's a line you can't cross?"

The boy looks at her, clearly wondering if this is a trick question to get more cash out of him. He drops forty dollars into Mariam's outstretched hand and shrugs. "Depends I guess. It's different for every person. My parents, my friends, my girlfriend."

Mariam's tempted to ask him how he possibly scored himself a girlfriend, but refrains. "And do you ever cross any of those lines?"

The boy shrugs. "Yeah. Sometimes, I guess. It's not a really big deal, I guess. They get over it in the end. Well, maybe my girlfriend wouldn't, but she's just a girlfriend. No biggie." He stalks away before Mariam can get any more money from him, leaving the girl to stand by herself in a sunlit alley.

Mariam ponders the boy's words. He seemed so indifferent about crossing his lines, like they didn't matter too much anyway because the other person almost always forgave him anyway. Max would forgive Mariam in a heartbeat because he would give her anything she wanted, and that's when Mariam realized it wasn't so much about Max forgiving her. No. It was about her.  
>Forgiving herself.<p>

Even though Mariam knows what to do, she can't bring herself to forgive herself. It's not supposed to be that easy.

Max comes to her flat after three days of being ignored. She won't buzz him up.

"Mariam," Max calls. He stands on the street and she can hear him with the sliding door open. She wants to shut it, but it's stifling in New York City today and her AC is broken. Karma.

So, Mariam does what she's learned to do well: ignore Max. She feels a little bad because she's pretty sure he's making a fool out of himself, but she ignores him calling to her balcony and then the ringing of her telephone and then praises herself because she knows that she stayed on her side of the line.

"Hah, gotcha," Mariam says when the sun goes down and she can shut the sliding door without suffocating in her flat. She's speaking to the line, which is pretty dumb, but she has to because she thinks she has it beat.

And maybe it's all in her head (who is she kidding? Of course it's all in her head. The line doesn't actually exist), but she swears she hears the line say, _If you say so, _and Mariam knows that it's won again. Even when she thinks she's got it, she doesn't.

"How do I win?" Mariam asks aloud. "What do I have to do to beat this stupid line?" But it doesn't answer back because it knows that Mariam's smart enough to figure it out, even if she doesn't believe it herself.

The next day, Mariam hops a train out of town and goes into absolute-no-where. It's another impulse and Mariam thinks briefly that she should go back to Japan just to get rid of the stupid act-now-think-later thing, but she most definitely cannot go back until she gets her line to straighten out again.

She's surprised when she finds someone to battle out in absolute-no-where. They let it rip in a corn maze and find themselves racing along the paths with their Beyblades, urging them on.

"You're from the city, right?" the girl asks Mariam. She has sunny blonde hair the same colour as wheat and blue eyes as clear as the sky above them. Mariam thinks the girl could be Max's long-lost twin, but then Sharkrash is knocked back into the corn and it draws her attention back to the present.

"Not originally," Mariam admits. "But yeah, I came from the city on the train."

The other girl hums and her Beyblade presses Mariam's back, but being in the corn rather than on the path makes it harder for an attack, and Mariam uses this to her advantage. Sharkrash comes zipping out of the plants and crosses the path. When the other Beyblade does the same, it's all over. One hit from Mariam's and the other is spinning uselessly in the dirt.

The girl walks over and scoops up her Beyblade and then reaches into her pocket. "How much?" she asks, but Mariam shakes her head. Something about this girl (maybe it's because she reminds Mariam of Max) is different and she doesn't want to take any money from her.

"Don't worry about it," Mariam replies. "You can pay me by answering a question for me."

"Alright, shoot," Miss Honey Hair says.

"If there was a line that you weren't supposed to cross, and then you crossed it, what would you do?"

The girl thinks for a moment, the sun outlining every freckle on her face and every highlight in her hair. Finally, she says, "I think I'd just say, 'screw the line.'"

And that's what Mariam was afraid of.

Max is waiting outside the door of her flat when she gets home the next day. Like, right outside her flat.

"How did you get in?" she demands. There's ten feet of space between them and somewhere in that space is the line.

"I asked your neighbour to buzz me in," Max explains. "What are you running from?"

_You, _Mariam wants to say, but she doesn't. Instead, she puts her hands on her hips and says, "Move."

Max obliges, like he always does and Mariam unlocks the door and lets herself in, Max trailing behind her. He's a lot more confident than Mariam would be walking into the house of someone who had previously tried to steal her Bit Beast, but Max looks totally at ease.

"What's been going on?" Max asks as Mariam dumps her bag on the sofa and then heads to the kitchen. She pours them both water because she can't be bothered to make coffee and says, "Not much. You?"

Max scowls into his water. "Mariam," he says.

"Max," Mariam replies.

And Mariam can actually see the line right now.

It's not neon.

And it wasn't any thicker.

It's just there. Between them.

"I haven't spoken to you in days. Not after you ditched me on the dance floor at the party."

"I've just been busy," Mariam replies, which, now that she thinks about it, isn't a lie. She has been busy. Trying to decipher the line.

"Yeah?" Max asks, sipping on his water. "I talked to twenty Beybladers down there and only one of them said a girl with blue hair wiped him of all his money."

"Have you been stalking me, Max Tate?" Mariam snorts.

Max hums. "Yeah, I guess maybe I am." The answer is so easy for him and Mariam scowls. She hates the Max that challenges the line because he's never what she's expecting. He's suave and mature and it always, always, _always _makes her edgy.

"The guy also told me something else," Max says, and Mariam freezes from where she's putting her cup in the dishwasher. "He said you wanted to know about crossing lines. What's all that about, Mariam?"

Mariam says the only thing that she can: "Get out!"

Max does as he's told, draining the last of his water and setting the cup on the counter. "Mariam," he says. "I think you're looking at this wrong." But Mariam gives him that look she reserves only for her little brother and Max leaves without saying anything else.

The thing that irks Mariam the most is that Max gets under her skin like that. He tells her something that goes against everything she's working towards and it turns her whole world upside down. It's not fair because it's not reciprocal, no matter how badly she wants it to be, so Mariam has to sit in her flat alone and think about what Max said.

"I think you're looking at this wrong," Mariam repeats, spitting the words off her tongue like they're poison. "Well, Mr. Smarty-Pants, why don't you enlighten me on how else to look at it?" The question is pointless because Max is long gone, but the silence makes Mariam feel better because it proves that Max couldn't have answered it anyway.

Mariam sits on the floor of the balcony with her feet dangling over the edge and looks down at the street. The painted yellow lines on the road glow faintly in the twilight and Mariam wishes that her line could look like that.

But it doesn't.

Because it's never that easy.

Because it's not _real._

"Damn it!" Mariam shouts and she thinks that some people on the street below look up at her, but she's done caring. About them. She gets up and slams the sliding door behind her and grabs her Beyblade and a jacket and heads out. She's not coming home until she knows what to do with herself and her line-crossing ways.

Mariam's made over three hundred dollars, it's past two in the morning and she still doesn't get a good answer from anyone. She's asked everyone she battles what they would do if they crossed the line they're not supposed to cross and while she gets some stupid answers, she gets some philosophical ones too.

"I'd hop town."

"Apologize?"

"Pretend it never happened?"

"I think maybe you're looking at things too much. The lines are metaphorical. They're not real."

"Crossing those kinds of lines isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes it's just the next chapter in your relationship."

"I think maybe if you cross the line, it means that it's the right time for the line to not exist anymore."

The last quote comes from a boy with a hood drawn up over his head and a hat to shade his eyes. His Beyblade is enough to give him away, but Mariam doesn't call him out on it until she's lost. She hands the boy fifty bucks and watches as he recalls his Beyblade and then sticks it in his pocket.

"Is this what this is all about?" Max asks, slipping the hood off his head and tucking the baseball cap under his arm. "This is all about some stupid line?"

"It isn't stupid," Mariam says automatically. As soon as the words are out of the mouth she wants to punch herself in the face. "I mean, _I'm _not stupid. _This _isn't stupid, Max."

"Uh, yeah, it kind of is," the boy replies. "Mariam, I wasn't kidding when I said that maybe the line shouldn't exist anymore if you cross it. There's no point because it's not exactly like you can go back."

"A girl can try," Mariam replies snidely.

Max sighs.

This is how it is between them.

This is how it has always been between them.

But this isn't how he wants it to always be.

So Max steps forward, and Mariam stays frozen, and he presses their lips together for a moment before stepping backwards.

"You crossed a line there, Max," Mariam says.

"Yeah, sure, sure," Max replies. He turns and disappears into the night and ten minutes later, Mariam drags herself home.

She hasn't forgiven herself.

But she thinks that maybe now this makes them even.

The thing is, the line was supposed to prevent them from being something they're not. But now that Mariam looks back at it, she realizes it was holding them back from being who they were, what they were and who they could be.

It didn't have to be thicker.

And it didn't have to be neon.

It didn't have to be tangible or have a voice.

It didn't need any of those things because Mariam shattered it anyway.

And really, she didn't mind all that much.

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><p><strong>Wanted to apologize for a crappy ending. I wasn't really sure how to finish it up because this was seriously bordering as a crack!fic for a long time. Anyway, thanks for reading :)<strong>


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